Are Education Vouchers Draining New Hampshire’s Schools?
In this essay, Dr. Sydney Leggett, Superintendent of SAU 32 (Plainfield) and SAU 100 (Cornish), discusses the impacts of Education Vouchers on Granite State schools, in terms of transparency, accountability, and the values of public education.
Vouchers Just Aren’t Very… New Hampshire
New Hampshire has long taken pride in its ethos of self-reliance, local control, and community responsibility. Yet, the ongoing push for school vouchers disrupts this balance, leaving us with hard questions about how these programs impact our finances, our accountability, and our ethical commitments to one another. With an ongoing bill (HB115) promoting the expansion of the voucher program (available to all without eligibility criteria), the time to make wise decisions is now.
Public schools have long been considered important public goods. However, there’s been a shift lately; many talk about schools as if they’re consumer goods, with “clients” and “return on investments.” But public goods like education don’t follow the same rules as free-market economics. A public good is a resource or service that’s available to everyone, is “non-excludable” (no one can be prevented from using it), and “non-rivalrous” (one person’s use doesn’t reduce its availability to others). Voucher programs by nature are contrary to the foundation of our public schools, promoting exclusion, depletion of resources, and instability.
Let’s compare public schools to another public good – roads. Taxpayers throughout the state pay taxes to support safe, public roads – nobody is told they can’t travel on them and the goal is to provide access and opportunity for all to use these roads to get them where they want to go. But what if someone wanted their own private road? And they wanted your tax dollars to pay for it. And you – in fact, nobody – is allowed to ride on it. Is that something you’d be happy about as you write your check to the Town Hall?
What are Education Vouchers?
Vouchers, or Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs as they’re called in NH), allow public tax dollars that would normally go to support public schools to be used for religious schools, homeschooling, and/or private school tuition, including educational supplies. In New Hampshire, the funds for the school voucher program are taken from the state education trust, which was created to fund our schools through taxation. That system of using the education trust fund already drastically underfunds our schools and disproportionately impacts rural and economically disadvantaged communities. New Hampshire is ranked 50th (yes, last in the nation) in meeting its state commitment to fund education, and making less funding available to public schools will cause further underfunding concerns. To understand vouchers and why they aren’t good for New Hampshire, let's break them down into three key areas of concern: finance, accountability, and ethics.
The Financial Cost of Vouchers in New Hampshire
Diverting funds to voucher programs adds tremendous strain on public school budgets, leaving fewer resources for the students who rely on public education, while increasing local taxpayer spending. This isn’t just a numbers game; it’s about real consequences. Smaller and low socioeconomic schools are losing critical programs, staff, and even sometimes facing potential closure because the burden has become too high on the local taxpayer.
We must ask ourselves: are vouchers the best use of the already limited public dollars we have? New Hampshire’s history of frugality and common-sense spending would suggest otherwise. Consider this:
Rising Costs: Vouchers cost NH taxpayers more than $24 million for this current 24-25 school year and $73 million cumulative total since their inception in 2021. That’s $73 million that could have been used to fund public schools across the Granite State, decreasing local taxpayer burden, improving school infrastructure, supporting workforce development, and addressing critical learning needs.
Special Education Funding Cuts: NH School districts will receive approximately $17 million less in anticipated special education aid this year – these funds would come from the Education Trust; therefore, the Education Trust is funding vouchers but not fulfilling its current obligation to our current special education students.
Statewide Fiscal Implications: Other states have faced devastating financial consequences. Arizona’s voucher program accounts for about half of its state budget deficit, and Indiana incurred an additional $500 million burden on taxpayers for their universal voucher program. Is New Hampshire next? We already face a challenging budget season due to decreasing revenues – largely as a result of the decrease in business taxes and the elimination of income and dividends tax – both of which benefit the wealthy.
Learn from Others: Other states have tested voucher programs and identified a range of problems with them. Business leaders and fiscal conservatives in Idaho, New Jersey, Colorado, and Kentucky rejected voucher programs in 2024, and Nebraska went so far as to repeal a law that had allowed public dollars to go to private schools. Business leaders in Texas are currently actively fighting against proposed voucher legislation, as vouchers promote a fundamentally unwise business model.
New Hampshire is already struggling to fund the education system. How can we justify funding another system? Pro-voucher advocates believe that money will be saved in a universal voucher system as students leave public schools; that has not happened (as 75% of EFA students weren’t in public schools to begin with) and it is much less likely to be true by expanding the program – the removal of income limits will only open the door for more students who are already in private programs.
Summing up Financial Concerns: If you lack the funds to build, maintain and/or repair roads that are safe for everyone, should you give money away to a few people who want their own private highways?
Accountability: Where’s the Oversight?
Public schools are governed by elected school boards and are subject to rigorous oversight. Every dollar spent is accounted for; every programming decision is debated in open forums; and every policy aligns with federal and state mandates. This ensures that schools remain answerable to the communities they serve – as they should.
Voucher programs, by contrast, operate with significantly less oversight, leaving taxpayers in the dark about where their money goes. Consider these facts:
Fraud: An initial audit found inconsistencies in 24% of New Hampshire voucher applications. For example, proof of NH residency and income verification was inaccurate in 12 out of the 50 applications reviewed. Extrapolated to the 5,321 voucher students, this suggests that New Hampshire taxpayers could be funding as many as 1,330 students who don’t meet the basic eligibility criteria.
Inadequate Auditing: Voucher programs lack the auditing and accountability measures required of public schools. Families only need to report their income or special education needs once, with no subsequent checks; in addition, the state has refused to allow a full audit of the EFA program, stating that it’s run by a private organization and not subject to right-to-know laws. Even though parents/guardians have to submit a receipt for spending EFA dollars, there is no ability to confirm its real value.
No Learning Evidence: Research from the Brookings Institute shows that vouchers often lead to declines in academic achievement, particularly in larger programs. Major studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and Washington have shown that low-income students’ scores decline with voucher programs.
For a state that values local control and transparency, vouchers are a giant step in the wrong direction. If there’s one thing I know for certain about New Hampshire, it’s that taxpayers want to know – and deserve to know – where and how their tax dollars are being spent. Vouchers fly in the face of this fundamental principle.
Summing up Accountability Concerns: Returning to our roads… let’s say over the past three years New Hampshire taxpayers contributed $73 million to build private roads – but we don’t know if they were actually built, if they’re safe, if they cost what someone said they cost, or if anyone’s traveling on them successfully. And when someone wants to check, we’re told that we’re not allowed to see them. This degrades our foundational NH transparency into obscurity and concealment.
The Ethical Dilemma: Public Good vs. Private Gain
At its heart, public education is about more than academic achievement; it’s about fostering a sense of community and shared responsibility. Every child, regardless of their zip code, family income, or background, deserves access to a high-quality education. Public schools are the places where children of all walks of life, without discrimination, come together to learn, grow, and build the future.
Community Impact: Small, rural districts—the heart of New Hampshire—are under threat of closure. Losing a school means losing the hub of the community and a place where residents connect, collaborate, and thrive. Vouchers are contributing to the potential demise of communities that make New Hampshire…New Hampshire.
Discrimination: Vouchers originally began as a response to Brown v. Board of Education, enabling white families to avoid integrated schools. This troubling history reminds us of the discriminatory potential of these programs, which has already been seen in New Hampshire’s program through socioeconomic discrimination (the majority of families taking vouchers were already enrolled in private and religious schools or being homeschooled). In addition, the ability to use voucher funds to pay for religious schools is contrary to the long-held belief in the separation of church and state. Private education funded by vouchers can exclude students based on religion, disability, or other factors, widening the gap between those who stay in public schools and those who go elsewhere—and low-income students fare worse in voucher systems. In fact, the largest longitudinal study was recently released by Stanford University, finding that in districts with voucher programs, racial segregation has increased by 64% since 1988, and socioeconomic segregation has increased by 50% since 1991.
Being in a community requires that we look beyond individual gain to the collective good. Public schools aren’t line items in a budget; they’re the bedrock of our democracy and the soul of our communities. Supporting them fully and equitably for all – without exclusion - is not just a financial decision or a matter of policy—it is our ethical imperative.
Summing up Ethical Concerns: Public dollars cannot go towards funding roads that only some travel – and especially not those that exclude others.
Investing in New Hampshire’s Future as a Public Good
New Hampshire’s history values transparency, fairness, community, and yes…frugality. It’s why many live here. Voucher programs may sound appealing on the surface, but they undermine our core principles at every turn. They drain public resources, evade accountability, and abandon our ethical commitments to each other. Some claim that vouchers will save taxpayer dollars, but that’s been proven false.
Let’s keep New Hampshire’s public schools strong and accessible for everyone. They are, quite literally, the “roads” for everyone. When I’ve discussed my “roads metaphor” with voucher advocates, the typical response is this: “Well, the public roads sometimes have potholes and they need re-paving and resurfacing.” My reply is always the same: “Yes, that's true – we have some ‘potholes' in our public schools and much work to do, but in the end, I want my (already stretched) tax dollars to go to fixing public roads that benefit everyone.
The EFA program is already problematic – we can’t let it get worse through the proposed HB115 expansion. Let’s appreciate and support the public good of our public schools – it will always give back. I believe in our schools. I believe in our public. And I believe in good.
About Dr. Sydney Leggett
Dr. Sydney Leggett, Superintendent of SAU 32 (Plainfield) and SAU 100 (Cornish)
Dr. Sydney Leggett is currently the superintendent of schools for the Plainfield and Cornish school districts. She serves as the Chair of the Equity Committee for the New Hampshire School Administrators Association (NHSAA) and is a proud co-founder of WELLNE, a non-profit group dedicated to supporting women in central office leadership in PK-12 public schools. She received her doctorate at Southern New Hampshire University in 2020 and continually strives to put research into practice for the support of public schools. She lives with her husband, Chris, spending as much time as they can with their three children.